Basketball: Harvey teams advance to HVAL semifinals

The Harvey School boys and girls basketball teams both advanced to the Hudson Valley Athletic League semifinals with victories on Tuesday in the opening round of the playoffs.

Harvey’s girls varsity basketball team used a big first half offensive explosion to coast to a 56-37 quarterfinal victory against Forman. The Lady Cavaliers outscored Forman by 21 points in the first half.

Forman bounced back in the second half, outscoring Harvey by two, but the first half lead the Lady Cavs built up was too large a deficit for Forman to overcome.

The Lady Cavaliers (9-6) will face Watkinson on Thursday in a semifinal match-up.

The Harvey’s boys varsity team also won its quarterfinal game Tuesday, 54-34, over Watkinson. With the victory, their ninth in their last 12 games, the Cavaliers continued their magical ride in the second half of their season. They had dropped their first 10 games before turning their season completely around.

Harvey came out firing right out of the gate against Watkinson with a 15-0 run that gave the Cavaliers a big first-half lead. Watkinson had a strong second half but could not shut down Harvey’s offense.

Senior forward Jesse Zubren of Pound Ridge led the way in scoring for the Cavaliers with 13 points.

“Jesse continues to play hard for us, like he has all year,” coach Dom Narcisco said of his senior captain. “The team really wants to rally around his leadership and win for him.”

Another Pound Ridge resident, junior forward Jake Cohn, also had a nice game for Harvey, scoring seven points while adding four rebounds, four assists and four steals. Junior center Andrew Schwartz of Bedford Corners came up big under the boards with nine rebounds.

Harvey will look to upset the number-one seed, Chase Collegiate, in the semifinals on Thursday at 5:15.